


There Was This One Time

by turnonmyheels



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-29
Updated: 2010-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnonmyheels/pseuds/turnonmyheels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean is Tim's new tutor.  Spoilers:  All of seasons 1 and 2, deleted scenes from season 2</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Was This One Time

Tim sprawls in his chair, banging his knees on the too-short table, almost knocking his frayed notebook and chewed pen to the floor. He checks the clock, ten after three, and wonders where the hell Landry is. He's two seconds away from walking out and going for a beer when she walks in.

"There was this one time? At Physics camp?" Her hair is sort of cornrowed and sort of dreadlocked and she's short enough that she'd only have to tilt her head to lick his belly button.

He's seen her around, no one could miss a girl who looks like that. She drops her book bag beside his feet with a thud louder than his gear hitting the locker room floor and sits on the table, talking a million words a minute the entire time.

"I decided that the eleven dimensions of space time aren't enough to account for Landry giving up tutoring so he can spend time with his--" her voice drops an octave and Tim can practically feel the resentment --"new girlfriend. So here I am."

When she finally stops talking, the silence in the library is nearly deafening. She's pretty freaking cute, sitting there Indian-style, tearing strips of paper out of his notebook and folding them into progressively smaller squares. "Other than Landry and Tyra getting together, I didn't understand a word you said."

She flicks one of the little squares at him, it hits him on the forehead. "I'm your new tutor."

"Okay."

She tears off another strip, folds it in half and half again. "What? That's it? Just okay? Didn't you and Landry develop a rapport? Aren't you pissed he stole your girl?"

Tim snorts out a laugh and shakes his head. "Tyra's not been my girl since last year. Lando's a good guy, what do I care?"

"Huh." She meets his gaze and doesn't look away.

"So." Tim can feel a smile tugging the corners of his mouth. "You gonna tutor me?"

"I guess I kind of have to." She rolls her eyes and flicks another little square at him. "Where do you want to start?"

"I've got a D in every subject but Biology. I'm failing that."

"Why am I not surprised?" She springs off the table and digs into her bag pulling out a Biology text book with a triumphant "Ah hah." She plops down on the table in front of him again and grins. "Let's start at the beginning."

* * *

"Jean?"

This week her hair is bleached blonde with pink and purple and blue sections all braided together. She looks like a rainbow. There are other girls at the table, Julie Taylor and that girl that kissed him are down on one end, Julie nods at him and her friend blushes and turns away.

All talking stops and the other girls -- the girls that aren't Julie or Jean -- stare up at him like he's Bigfoot or that goofy looking guy from Transformers or something.

Jean squints up at him, straw dangling from her mouth, chocolate milk dripping from the straw onto her picked-over sloppy joe.

"Yeah?"

Tim straddles an empty chair and digs into his pocket coming up with a piece of paper that's folded, torn, stained, and smells a little like beer. "I've got to put this problem on the board today. I checked it to be sure it was right, like you showed me, but it's not working out."

"Let's see it." She snaps her fingers at him and he hands over his homework.

"You gonna eat that?" She purses her lips and slides her tray in his direction.

He's halfway finished with the sloppy joe when one of the girls across the table gives him a look and says, "Doesn't it bother you?"

"What?" He doesn't even bother to swallow first. He didn't have any breakfast and his lunch didn't make a dent in his hunger.

"Being tutored by someone two years behind you?"

"Meghan!" Jean snaps, but before she can argue with her friend, Tim answers.

"Why should it?" Tim shrugs his shoulders and takes a bigger bite of the sloppy joe, purposely talking with his mouth full. "She knows this stuff and I don't."

"I found it." Jean hands him his homework and she's drawn arrows at two lines. He sees it too. On the top line he'd written down a "2", but carried it as a "7" to the line below.

"Thanks." He re-works the problem and checks it. It's perfect. He finishes off her lunch, tugs at one of her braids and heads off to class.

"He's such a Neanderthal." Meghan says

"Actually, he's a victim of the system." Jean says and Julie jumps right into the conversation.

"Tim's actually pretty smart but Jean's right, he fell through the cracks because they'd rather promote his athleticism than take the time to ... "

The team's been hassling him for weeks about Jean being his tutor. He can't understand why it matters that she's younger than him.

* * *

"I got a B!" Tim exclaims and picks Jean up and spins her around.

She squeals a little and shouts out, "Kick ass!" He sets her on her feet, wraps an arm around her shoulders. "I'm taking you out to celebrate."

"Yeah, right. With what money?"

"Okay. So I'm taking you to my pool for a beer, but I'm still taking you. Gotta go gear up for the game." He drops a kiss on the top of her head and backs away pointing first at Jean and then at himself. "You and me, tomorrow afternoon, my house."

"Guess I need to bring my own food and sunscreen." She shouts after him and starts dialing the combination to her locker.

Tim pushes through the doors and calls over his shoulder. "Sunscreen? What's that?"

"I'm going to laugh at you when you die from melanoma." She's digging through her locker trying to find her list of Tim's assignments when Lyla Garrity leans on the locker next to hers.

"So." Lyla says. "You and Tim?"

"Huh?"

"You and Tim Riggins. You're seeing each other."

"We are?"

"Aren't you? You're always together."

"We are?"

"Yes." Lyla starts ticking items off on her fingers. "You sit together at lunch, you walk down the halls with his arm around you all the time. I see the two of you around town together. You're the only girl he's been with for a couple of months now."

"Um. Okay."

"I just wanted to tell you, that I think it's great. He's doing so much better. He's not as drunk, he doesn't skip school as much. He's ignoring the rally girls. I think you're a great influence on him."

"Oohhh-kay."

"It's just." Lyla hugs her books close to her chest and Jean can't help but wonder What The Fucking Hell is going on. "He's ... this is going to sound crazy, but he's sensitive. He's been hurt, really badly, and let down by about everybody, and just ... "

Jean raises her eyebrows and fights down the laugh that's threatening to bubble up and explode into Lyla's face.

"Be careful with him."

"You," she says the words slowly and enunciates them clearly, "want me to be careful with Tim."

"Please?" Lyla implores, big brown eyes shiny with unshed tears and Jean wonders when this turned into an episode of The OC. "I know it's not my place or anything, but there's not anyone who looks after him. Not really."

Jean thinks about Tim's house. The beer can pyramids, posters of mostly naked women on the walls, dirty laundry flung everywhere. The care baskets the Taylor's bring over, Tim holding little Gracie while Mrs. Taylor explains how to re-heat the meatloaf without ruining it, the days he spends with Street putting together baby furniture. Yeah, Tim's life isn't exactly from the pages of Norman Rockwell, but it's not what Lyla thinks it is either.

She starts to correct Lyla but changes her mind. Tim doesn't like to talk, not about himself, or the deal Coach Taylor helped him work out. She can't help other people's misconceptions and this is one she can't be bothered to correct.

So she shrugs and says, "I'll be careful. Don't worry about it."

* * *

She's funny. She doesn't judge him. She doesn't tell him he's stupid when he doesn't get it, she just keeps explaining things in different ways until he does. She's the smartest person he's ever met and other than Jason Street, the best friend he's ever had. He's not surprised when he wakes up from a wet dream of her little mouth around his dick and her multi-colored braids tickling his thighs.

He is surprised when the only thing he does about it is jerk off.

* * *

Billy offers Tim and Jean beer. Jean holds one hand out and sketches out a rhombus with the other.

"Can't, man." Tim says and starts working on proving a rhombus is not a square, which is totally retarded. He can *look* at it and see it's not a square. "Having trouble making weight."

Jean hoots and swigs her beer. "Tim's on a diet!"

"I can not believe you said that." Billy pops a hand full of potato chips in his mouth. "On a fucking diet."

Tim shrugs, "playing three sports and keeping a B average the whole time's the only way I'm gonna get to play football next year."

"You shoulda played basketball."

"I hate basketball."

"Yeah, but you don't have to go on a diet to play basketball like you do wrestling."

"He looks better in the wrestling uniform." Jean sips her beer and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "Well he does!" She pitches her voice up, bats her eyes and does her best rally girl impersonation. "It's all tight and snug, and shows it all off."

"You're cut off." Billy swipes her beer out of her hand and downs it himself. He tugs a braid -- red hair this week with black braids -- and heads for the kitchen.

"Have you seen it?" She says, turning to an invisible person. "It's *so* big. It just makes me weak in the knees, do you think he'd do me?"

Billy's falsetto rings out from the kitchen. "I've heard it's not nearly as big as his brother's!"

Tim bangs his head on his geometry book and gooses Jean's knee below the table. "I don't know how I ever get anything done with the two of you around."

* * *

"There was this one time? At Calculus camp?"

Every time they talk, on the phone or in person, or in Email even, she starts out just like that. It's an ongoing joke, sometimes it's Physics, Girl Scouts, or horseback riding camp, other times it's Mathletes or Chess Club. Something completely geeky that he has no way of knowing whether it's true or not. Usually he responds with a tale of booze and sex and rally girls but this time is different. Because school is over. He's graduated. He played three sports and kept his grades up. Dillon Tech is letting him in on those grounds with a full scholarship. He'll have to live at home and if his GPA drops below a 2.75 he'll be kicked off the team and out of school immediately, but he did it, with her help. He's starting a new life, one that isn't destined to end with him drowning in a puddle of his own vomit.

"Does it end with a calculator in your pussy?"

She chokes on her beer, spitting the last of it out into the pool. "Not quite." She reaches behind them and pulls a cold beer out of the cooler, pops it open with her ring like a true Texas girl and laughs at herself. "That's a better ending, though."

They're both a little drunk, in his pool, down in the deep end, elbows propped on the side, feet paddling every once in a while.

"There was this guy?" Tim starts then pauses, wonders what he's doing, but he's been thinking about this since the first time he woke up with her name on his lips. "He screwed up his entire life, most times on purpose, and then one day he woke up and realized it didn't have to be like that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Tim nods and slings an arm over her shoulders. "So he went looking for help and he found it. His Coach and Guidance Counselor teamed him up with this little bitty girl with the craziest hair he'd ever seen."

Jean digs an elbow into his ribs and laughs. "What happened then?"

"With a lot of help, he turned his life around."

"That's not more fun than a calculator in a pussy."

"That's 'cause I'm not done yet."

"Oh, yeah?" Jean wraps a leg around his. "What happens at the end?"

"He decided to take a chance and kiss her." He keeps his eyes open and tilts his head towards hers and brushes a kiss over her lips. "And see what she had to say about it."

Jean wraps her arms and legs around Tim and dunks him under the water, kissing him back when he rolls them over, deeper, and back to the surface.


End file.
